Happy New Year!

Hope you're all surviving the freezing weather!

The centre's now fully open again, with quite a few groups braving the icy conditions. The first group of the year were some mad explorers from Glasgow who turned up on the 2nd January for a weekend of activities (mostly indoors though) and a spot of sledging on flagpole hill.

The past few months have been pretty busy - here's a quick roundup of what's been happening.

November saw us holding two of our regular courses - GNAS archery one over 2 weekends and Brian & June's popular first aid course over 1 weekend.

We were also honoured to have a visit from Radio Scotland who came to record some material for one of their programmes : Bob became a star after being interviewed and there was also the excitement for the listeners of listening to crate climbing and pioneering on the radio!! What fun, you could really feel the tension as the scouts finished off their square lashings.

Into December and still busy in terms of groups. The staff treated themselves to a fancy new TV, after suffering with the old one for far too long. Plans to improve the reception by installing Sky Freeview were quickly dashed due to signal problems, but hopefully we can find a solution soon. Of course, it was also time for the annual Christmas Meal which was fantastic - this year we headed out for a spot of 10-pin bowling then back to the conference room for a great meal (courtesy of the new caterers) and a fab xmas quiz hosted by Claire & Lindsey.

There's another busy year ahead with a few new events - more updates soon but till then here's a random selection of photos from the past few months.


Above : the staff had to help a few cars out of the iced-up carpark in December


Above : Henry trying out his new sledge


Above : Foggiest day ever - Bob waits in vain at flagbreak for the scouts to arrive.


Above : How do his feet reach the pedals?


Above : Sleeping beauty


Above : Radio pioneering - Bob being interviewed about this exciting new extreme sport.


Above : Teambuilding in the rain.


Above : new staffhut TV, a huge improvement over the old one.


Above : Bob showing Brian how wide the well was which he found the donkey in.


Above : Fordell Christmas dinner 2009


Above : Ian tries for a new world record of some description.



Above : Stevie enjoying the traditional Christmas party games


Above : Luckily, Brian didn't seem to have suffered any serious damage.

JOTA 2009

Amazingly, that's a whole year since the last Jamboree On the Air (JOTA) so last weekend it was time for it again. The event was organised by Fordell's resident amateur radio club (KARS) who had been busy during the week setting up the equipment and rigging up a few temporary wire aerials in the trees.

Bases were set up in the reception building and Scottish Headquarters - this year there was a special website setup for the event which you can look at here.



Above : reception room busy on sunday afternoon


Above : Caught in the act...a couple of young scallywags try to hack into a US Military website during Jamboree-on-the-internet.


Above : Main man Richard feeling a bit camera shy

As well as the JOTA, the KARS guys have also been helping the centre a bit by making up vinyl vehicle stickers for the centre land rovers. Both vehicles are now looking splendid with custom signs as you can see from the photo below.



While the JOTA proved very busy, the rest of the site was fairly quiet in terms of activities and visitors. Most of the staff had decided to have a rare weekend off, apart from serial Fordell addicts Henry and Ali who weren't able to tear themselves away from the staffhut, cheap coffee and even cheaper food for even one weekend.

Saturday was pretty quiet and sunday we had a visit from an combined stag and hen party (?!) who had heard that the challenge course was good fun and spent a couple of hours falling off beams, getting stuck in tyres and finally having a shot of the climbing wall. Excellent group and they all seemed to have a great laugh, even if a few of them found some of the challenge course obstacles a bit challenging.

This weekend also looks like being quiet, next event coming up is (I think) the annual first aid course by Brian and June which we'll no doubt have some photos of here.

Bye for now!


Above : Things to do in the staff hut when you're bored #421 - play Pacman with Quorn slices and crisps.

Paddy the dog

Following a busy weekend a few weeks ago we received an email on behalf of the Tullibody guides, who'd had a camp and taken part in lots of activities on site. With them had been their official mascot, Paddy the dog, and as promised here are some photos of him taking part...(totally unedited of course...)


Above : Feeling left out as the guides all get to go crate climbing.


Above : Trying to drop some hints to the instructor.



Above : Harnessed up and ready to go.

We hope Paddy and the guides enjoyed themselves at Fordell and look forward to seeing them again soon.

Away from activities and there's been quite a bit of work going on at the centre. As mentioned a few months ago, the quad track has now gone and is gradually being turned back into a grassy camping area. The photos below give you an idea of how much it's changed (and these are a month or so old, so it should be looking even more different now). Now we're nearly into the winter season, there'll be a lot more time soon to spend on various projects and odd jobs around the centre, so look out for lots of exciting (?) photos here.


Above/below : old quad track before/after clearing and topsoil.


Despite the end of the summer, the weekends are still pretty busy for now- lots of groups either camping or popping in for activities. A mix of weather with a few cracking days and a few dreadful ones too.


Above : Don't leave animals in hot cars!

A couple of weeks ago we ran some activities for the Pentland Challenge, which was an activity camp based at Bonaly and organised/run by the Scottish Fellowship. Due to the large number of participants at the event, a few groups were brought over from Edinburgh on the saturday where they took part in some of our activities (climbing, jacobs ladder, challenge course, low ropes, etc).



Above : Craig discovers the chilli pepper which has been comically planted in his shepherd's pie.

After a particularly busy saturday, the staff retired for an enormous meal of shepherd's pie, only to be called into action immediately after it was discovered that one of the toilets in the toilet block had a bit of a problem. Brian was unanimously elected as chief toilet-unblocker while the rest watched and learned from a safe distance (the staffhut). The photo below gives an idea of the seriousness of the problem...


Above : No comment required.



Above : Brian telling an enthralled audience about his near-death encounter in the toilets.

That's all for now folks, as the blogmeister has to rush off to Dunfermline to help with his Explorers, but we'll be back in a couple of weeks with another update so stay tuned.

Disclaimer : no real dogs or fluffy animals were harmed during the making of this blog post.

Mystery object

Yes, it's time for another fantastic free competition!

Just tell us what the mystery object is in the photo below (being shown off by Ali). It was found a few weeks ago somewhere on the site.



Answers to the usual address - the first correct answer will win a wonderful prize.

Terms and conditions : Prize is a 5-hour self-supervised session on the low-ropes course which must be taken between 1am and 6am on the 31st December 2009. No cash alternative. Fordell staff, volunteers, friends and family are forbidden from entering, as are any persons who have visited Fordell in the past, know someone who has or have read this blog. All entries should be accompanied by a £25 'processing fee' cheque, made payable to the 'Fordell Fellowship Christmas Meal Fund'.

Back again!

Above : Fordell on a particulary wet August day.

Yes, after a well-deserved holiday the blog has returned (slightly sunburned) with some of the summer's news.

After the last big event (Dunfermline District camp), the grass had a couple of weeks to recover and then it was straight into the usual busy summer period. Midweeks suddenly got much busier as we had lots of summer camps, and weekends quietened down a bit as most groups tended to leave and arrive then.

The new grasscutter made a long-awaited appearance and was quickly put to good use. Previously we've relied on the tractor to cut the main fields, but it's always been fairly slow and was hard to get into some of the smaller areas. The new grasscutter can now cut both the main camping areas and also a lot of the areas which needed strimmed before, so should be able to save loads of time.

Sadly, we had to bid farwell to the old Zetor tractor, but hope it's found a happy new home somewhere else.


Above : No, Henry, you can't borrow it to use as a golf buggy.

Over the summer there have been a huge number of different groups, including quite a few foreign groups. Due to the busy midweek periods, 2 of the Fellowship (Craig and Stuart) were taken on as full-time summer staff and are still working there at the moment. Although the weekends were a bit quieter for a while they're now back to normal with most weekends needing 10 or 12 staff in to cover activities.

Midway through August and it was time for the annual roped activity training/assessment session again. Slightly later than usual, the first one was for the 'old' people, ie those that had been running sessions for a few years.


Above : Midway through the rope assessment on a fantastic summer night.

As usual this was run by Steve Spalding - and there was a big attendance as we also welcomed 3 scout leaders from across the Forth Bridge who were there as part of the Climbing Wall Award.


Above : Zipline training / assessment.

On the night we looked at the setup for climbing, crate climbing , abseil, zipline and jacob's ladder. All these have been running very smoothly over the past year and it was decided to leave most of the systems as they are. The only exception was zipline, where we looked at a few new options regarding rescue, and also played about with the new method for the instructor to climb up to the platform at the start (using an autolocking device on a fixed rope instead of having to fiddle about with lanyards while climbing the pole). A few different rescue scenarious were carried out, involving a 'random' staff member being sent down the line and told to feign unconsciousness while the rest of the group rescued him. Several major wedgies later and things seemed to be running fairly slickly.


Above : Ginga rehearsing for his lead role in the Fordell Xmas pantomime (Jack and the Beanstalk). The real Jack isn't available on the day of the performance, due to family commitments.


Above : Trying out some rescue techniques on the zipline.


Above : 2 weeks prior to the zipline training, Craig tries to rescue a pulley which an unnamed instructor accidentally dropped down the line.

Visitors with a keen eye will notice a few changes around the site. Here's a wee summary for those who haven't...

After the tractor, the old Range Rover was next to go as Bob swapped it for a slightly newer Land Rover. We now have 2 in addition to the Ford Ranger and these are only used onsite for moving trailers, doing bin runs and for using during the zipline sessions. Although the Range Rover was a definite favourite with some of the staff, due to its automatic gearbox, electric seats, electric sunroof and fancy trim, it tended to be very unreliable and wasn't particulary economical at all.


Above : Replacement for the old Range Rover (no electric seats this time though).

The staff hut has been having bits and pieces of ongoing work as usual - new addition to the wonderful lounge wall is 2 pairs of ancient ice-axes which were found hidden away in the depths of the main store. As it was unlikely these would ever be used again (or that anyone would actually want to), they're now decorating the back wall.



The front of the gazebo's been tidied up with the addition of some new stone chips - previously this was a muddy/rocky mess and now looks much nicer.



Above : Front of the gazebo looking much tidier now.


Above : Wee rock garden near the reception.

Dunfermline District Camp

As promised, here's some photos from the District Camp - there are also loads more on the main Fordell website (thanks to Ian), so have a look there afterwords.

The weather was generally great for the whole weekend - friday night stayed dry as all the groups arrived. Most of the tents/marquees/equipment had already been set up beforehand so things went pretty smoothly. Groups started arriving from 6pm onwards, and by around 8:30pm everyone was assembled at the campfire circle for the opening ceremony.

Saturday morning saw lots of excited hyperactive cubs and scouts up incredibly early (some at 5am!), playing football and waking up the leaders, although strangely this didn't happen on the sunday morning and they seemed reluctant to get up.

The main camp programme consisted of lots of different activities on saturday and sunday morning/afternoon, as well as an arena show at saturday lunchtime, a bazaar saturday evening and a campfire again on the saturday night. During the weekend groups had the chance to take part in the usual site activities as well as offsite ones (watersports, quad biking, etc) and other one-off bases.

Here's a selection of photos from throughout the weekend, enjoy.


Above : arriving at camp. Bonus point if you can spot Henry!





Above/below : Opening campfire.

Above : Many of the scouts quickly made new friends from other groups.

Above : An eager crowd gather in anticipation of the old donkey story on saturday morning.

Above : groups enjoying the good weather before the arena show

Above : Firemen getting ready to rescue invisible man from crashed car.

Above : Craig leads a team of scavengers to try and salvage some spare parts for his own car after the show.

Above : Bob realises the pitfalls of buying a used car on Ebay.

Above : Aerobics session just about to start up.

Above : Fordell staff busy with popcorn/candyfloss sales.

Above : Gladiator action

Above : One of the more popular bases on the saturday night.

Above : Camp leader John trying out his fantastic new mic stand, as the staff wonder where the bit off their hoover has gone.

Above : Hovercraft looking a bit bruised after some poor drivers/pilots on the saturday.

Above : The mystery of the disappearing popcorn is finally solved.

Above : much better fire on the saturday night!!!

Above : Honda Pilots, in one of the nearby fields.

Above : an exclusive for the camp - the world's largest working guitar effects pedal.

Above : Scouts busy in the radio club hut.

Above : Yoda and friends at the closing ceremony.